Hiding the Text
The rabble with them began to crave other food, and again the Israelites started wailing and said, “If only we had meat to eat! Numbers 11:4 NIV
To crave other food– Unfortunately the translators of the NIV have hidden the real impact of this Hebrew text by substituting a conclusion for the actual language. In Hebrew, the text reads hităwwu taʾawwâ(h), literally, “desire desire” or perhaps the stronger, “lust for desire.” In other words, “food” does not enter the picture until later, when “meat” is introduced. Zornberg explains why an idiomatic translation is inadequate:
“In the next episode, the ‘riffraff’ desired desire. This cryptic expression is usually idiomatically translated, ‘were overwhelmed by desire.’ But the object of their desire is at first unexplained: they simply, reflexively, ‘desire desire.’ Only in the next verse do we hear the voice of the people, specifying their desire: ‘Who will give us meat? . . . We remember the fish . . .’ . . . But the unappeasable nature of desire is already implicit in the cognate verb and object: ‘They desired desire.’ A blank wishfulness haunts their cry: who will gratify this desire?”[1]
What is this unspecified wishfulness that doesn’t care about the actual objective but only about the craving? How does this happen? Perhaps the book of Numbers is really also the story of our own return to Egypt, to comfortable bondage despite the slavery it brings. Zornberg correctly notes: “Turning aside from a fascination with God (meiacharei Ha-Shem), they obey an impulse to flee from the intensity of Sinai to the simpler pleasures of the flesh.”[2]
With Luzzatto, she concurs: “Desire for pleasure is the force that moves human beings.”[3]
Have we not experienced the craving for desire? Do we not find that life among the commandments, bereft of a fascination with the Author, is a vexing existence of demand and failure? The return to a comfortable bondage is not like deliberate sin. “This is not a choice between good and evil in the moral sense. It is a turning aside, an aversion from one source of bliss and its substitution by another.”[4] It is the desire for desire, for intoxication with our own preoccupations. And it is much more powerful than any temptation to deliberately disobey. The Hebrew text of Numbers recognizes this complexity. The translators erase it. Perhaps the implications of the Hebrew text are just too close to home to allow proper translation. It is so much easier to think that the Israelites struggled with something to eat than to realize they were eaten from within.
Topical Index: desire, hităwwu taʾawwâ(h), Numbers 11:4
[1]Avivah Gottlieb Zornberg, Bewilderments: Reflections on the Book of Numbers, pp. 66-67.
I had learned somewhere in the Jewish Sages that in coming out of Egypt oh, there was something about taking possession of an evil eye. I’m also brought to a New Testament text familiar to us, it’s not what goes into the mouth but it’s what comes out. It really isn’t about the food at all. It’s about not paying attention to what you’re saying, or even capturing our thoughts, as Paul teaches us. We must bring everything into the obedience of Christ. We are born again not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible. These should be major teachings. In bible-believing fellowships come up, I was told recently there should not be such a thing as a New Testament Church, although the thought is provoking, it concept is foolishness .
Paul seems to address the root cause of this issue in Romans 8:5-9. “For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace. Because the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. So then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his.”
And in the immortal words of Forrest Gump: “That’s all I have to say about that.”
“It is so much easier to think that the Israelites struggled with something to eat than to realize they were eaten from within.” I would suggest the recently freed Israelites were eaten up with a combination of greed and lack of trust in their Creator who just saved them and brought them out of bondage. God recognized it handily…hence, the 40 years of trying to teach them as they wandered through the desert…still to little avail.
Also, lack of gratitude…a huge problem and vulnerability for us humans.
Check out that apple!
Looks good for nourishment. Sure pleasing to
the eye. And we hear it will make us wise.
What more motivation do we need?
Every pleasurable goal offers a good short term fix.
But it’s those short term fixes that are eating us inside
and preoccupying us from standing on higher ground
where God’s Spirit awaits. Until He arrives, the thirst
persists.
So sad and ironical that He’s closer than breathing . . .
offering a free drink of water. “Everyone who drinks this
water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water
I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them
will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal
life.” Jn 4:13-14
From Laurita:
This is amazing and profound. I think the desire for love is unrecognized in all the places we have not yet experienced it. In those places, we color in addictions and false belief systems, too. It doesn’t matter what addiction: we need some more seratonin down here, y’all!
The idea that there might actually be a Lover on the other end of that rope? Terrifying! The idea that what we were made to desire most is the happiness of that Lover? Why, that looks like bondage – to our flesh, anyway, because that’s all the flesh knows of ‘making’ someone else happy. (See: even the language is corrupted by the words of force and manipulation.) Let’s all ‘make’ ourselves and each other, too, and pretend together that something happened. I think false religion – as well as addiction – supplies this by the bucket full – these substitutes for the Lover of my soul. Wait: actually residing IN my soul? Way, way too close for comfort! Way too much life! Way too much intensity! Back off: Hound of Heaven! I want to just curl up in a quiet corner; just me and my self pity and a couple of nice distractions. Just for a little while. Living all the time is just too much to take in my own skin!
I think what we really need is a transformation at the molecular level: a spiritual blood transfusion. “Create in me a new heart, O Lord”: the one I have can’t handle this Life that keeps wanting to run Someone Else’s blood through the heart I have, and breathe with my lungs and – and – and – think with my brain and do with my hands, too! Why, there will be nothing left to feed my nice little self pity monster with or commiserate with other almost-living losers like – well, hey! You mean I can’t even enjoy being more like my friends either? We need a little more bondage to go over here, please!
Laureta,
I always enjoy your provocative comments on Skip’s daily words. I shake my head all the time, and I mean that in the most positive sense.
Think I’ve caught some kind of “bug” from you. Here’s what I was thinking. Messiah tells us in John 10:10 that our adversary comes to steal, kill and destroy. If we look to non-Messiah “possession” for “pleasure” our life becomes poor, it takes on the odor of putrefying flesh and it gets demolished by over indulgence. Possession for pleasure by Messiah brings abundance (El Shaddai), Zoe, God’s kind of life (how does Ya live? Yeah that’s the question too be pondered, Selah!) and flourishing, reproduction and “Big Bang” type creation into each one of us!
Why do we desire so much quail?